338
PARTISAN REVIEW
is
proved by the basically different mentalities expressed in their
opposing attitudes toward reality.
How did the magic symbol enter the novel, the literary form
which by its very nature
is
tied to reality? It is tempting to find the
answer in the great influence and great prestige of symbolist poetry,
especially that of the French symbolists. And in fact this is essentially
true so far as the modem novel
is
concerned. But it
is
interesting to
note that the lyrical symbolists in their tum found an influential
model in the novel. I refer to Novalis's fragmentary poetic novels,
especially his
Heinrich von Ofterdingen,
which centers around the
"blue flower," the most famous symbol of German Romanticism. In
the author's conception,
Heinrich von Ofterdingen
is a "poetic"
and "romantic" novel, that is, a radically unrealistic novel which
loftily and deliberately disregards all the conditions of real life. The
medieval poet Heinrich von Ofterdingen roams the world searching
for the meaning of nature and its laws, the meaning of love and of
poetry. The revelation of their meaning occurs, in typically romantic
fashion, in the form of legend and fairy tale. Here we have a world
completely dominated by the miraculous and the symbolic, with the
"blue flower" functioning as a sort of symbol of symbols, represent–
ing the most secret meaning of the poet's art. This novel shuns the
realities of human life to a degree that has scarcely been attempted
since. Henry James's
Golden Bowl,
in which the symbol also has a
dominant role, at least maintains the appearances of nineteenth–
century reality, even if on closer scrutiny the timeless fairy tale ele–
ments show through.
The important role of the symbol in the American novel can–
not, however, be adequately explained by models in European roman–
ticism or by the influence of the French symbolists. Symbolism is
a native American growth, which flourished in this country earlier
and more vigorously than elsewhere. It draws its sustenance from
the soil of Calvinism, a fact that again corroborates, in a different
way, our observation concerning the ancestry of the symbol in the
world of faith. American symbolism
is
a form of secularized and
aestheticized Calvinism. Hawthorne's allegories, Emerson's principle
that "every natural fact is a symbol of a spiritual fact," and Mel–
ville's scarcely maintained faith in the meaningfulness of the world–
"some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are of
